I still feel quite embarrassed to say this, but – as I mentioned in the introduction of this book – one of my lifelong challenges has been to ‘feel like one of the grownups’. However, the older I get, and the more I talk to others, the more I realise that most of us feel like this to some degree.
My friend Judy Piatkus and her husband Cyril invited Helen and me to Sunday lunch at their lovely … [Read more...]

One afternoon in 2004, I received an unexpected call from a man in Switzerland. He explained, ‘I’m Head of Learning and Development in the Zürich office of PriceWaterhouseCoopers and I wondered whether you’d be interested in coming over to talk to our Swiss auditing team about the importance of inspiration in the workplace.’
It took me a couple of seconds to absorb what I was hearing. I’d … [Read more...]

Five lessons in Leading with Inspiration from my first season of being captain of the bowls team of Finchley Victoria Bowling and Croquet Club
In October 2016, I reluctantly stood for the captaincy of our local bowls team, where I had been a playing member for two years. Reluctant because I am still working full time in my own business, and didn’t know if I had the time, energy or skills. I was … [Read more...]

In early December last year, my mum’s dementia progressed and she was telephoning me many times a day to ask me to go and collect her, take her out of the home and bring her home.
One particular day she called both my sister and I over 80 times each, with no memory of having made any of the calls.
I was able to cope with the first 50 or so, but by the end of the day I on my knees. I just … [Read more...]

When embarking on a journey, do not consult those who have never left home
Jallaludin Rumi, mystic poet
Last week, I was invited to sit in on a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Committee on Youth Employment at the House of Commons. I have been to the Houses of Parliament a few times, and always feel in awe of the surroundings.
This time, I came away with a combination of inspiration … [Read more...]

“Life, the universe, God, they aren’t withholding or hiding knowledge of your purpose from you. They have put them in your heart, but we have created so many blocks to seeing it clearly within ourselves. One of the hardest things for each of us to accept is this: it we who are hiding from our purpose. It is we who are afraid to know.”
Growing up, I had always wanted to find my purpose, why … [Read more...]

This story is from my book Pivotal Moments
After my visit to the Samye Ling monastic community, I got a lift over to the Findhorn centre in Forres, northern Scotland, where I was going to spend a few days. The Findhorn Foundation was one of the inspirations for Alternatives, so I thought I would visit the source. Findhorn was founded by Eileen and Peter Caddy and Dorothy MacLean, and its impact … [Read more...]

I have been reflecting recently of just how much of the last three decades I have spent consciously pioneering in my own life. From leaving my corporate job to starting my own business, becoming a promoter, a Director and then Trustee of Alternatives in Piccadilly, becoming a speaker and coach, becoming an author, creating a body of work and developing several brands along the way. I feel like I … [Read more...]

I have been sharing with you recently my own journey, of having a hernia operation three weeks ago, the fear and vulnerability I felt about having surgery, and now that I am recovering, I feel a new project in the birth canal, and part of me is very scared to give birth.
What I am aware of right now is so often when I am at a significant threshold, as I feel I am now, how there are parts of me … [Read more...]

I continue to recover, especially after having just spent four days, including my birthday, with my friend Art Giser on a health and vitality workshop he was running in London.
As I surface again, I can feel an old familiar tension in me. I know I have been incubating a new leadership project for several years and have allowed some small aspects of it out. And I can notice that old familiar … [Read more...]

Since I was ill with hepatitis back at the end of 2012, I feel like I have been in another significant phase of my own transformation and beginning a new chapter. The flavour of this new chapter of mine has been around leadership, and feeling a strong call into the area of leadership. Speaking about it, writing about it and coaching and mentoring leaders.
But leadership is such a loaded word. … [Read more...]

In 2002, Bantam Books published my third book, Powerful Beyond Measure.
It was my first offering in to the enquiry, “What does it mean to be spiritually powerful?”. One of the thoughts that inspired my book was the line in Marianne Williamson’s book A Return to Love that said, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful measure.”
I became … [Read more...]

One of the more hidden aspects of my personality has been my desire to be overly control. Whilst a certain amount of self-control is healthy and necessary, like most of us, I have also got an inner control freak. I have tried to unhealthily control myself, my feelings and events around me, as well as other people and their feelings.
One of my teachers Chuck Spezzano, gave me a major insight … [Read more...]

My belief is that we are all gifted with creative energy and a creative spirit that came with our creation. What we have a choice over is what we do with that creative energy.
I spent the first half of my life investing my creative energy into making excuses about why I couldn’t be creative, and I got to be right, and pretty unhappy. The paradox is that I was actually incredibly creative in … [Read more...]

When I am working, I have often been introduced as a motivational speaker and author, and there is something about that really hasn’t sat well with me. I much prefer to think of myself as an inspirational writer and speaker. But what is the difference? Over the last few years, this has also prompted me to enquire deeply into asking myself “So, what is the difference between inspiration and … [Read more...]

In December 2014, Baiju Solanki, a member of the Born To Global Community in London showed me Wordswag on his I Phone. Wordswag allows you to combine text and images and publish them easily to social media with a few key strokes from your phone.
I immediately downloaded it to my own shiny, fresh out of the box, I Phone 6.
Little did I know how pivotal downloading that app would be for … [Read more...]

I was running a course at Atsista Bay on Skyros, when I experienced just how powerful and life-changing the human desire to share our gifts can be.
As part of the holistic holiday centre’s activities, it was announced that there was to be a ‘pea fair’ that evening. Hardly any of us knew what one was, but we learned that we were all invited to set up stalls that provided some sort of gift or … [Read more...]

Mentoring the mentor
This is the latest story I am pre-publishing from my soon to be released book, Pivotal Moments
I still feel quite embarrassed to say this, but – as I mentioned in the introduction of this book – one of my lifelong challenges has been to ‘feel like one of the grownups’. However, the older I get, and the more I talk to others, the more I realise that most of us feel like … [Read more...]

I first visited Las Vegas in July 1989 when I travelled by Greyhound bus across the US after quitting my corporate career. I got the bus from Albuquerque to Vegas and then to San Francisco after that. I had a plan – to spend 48 hours in Las Vegas, hate it, judge it, and vow never to go back again and tick it off my list.
What actually happened was that I quite liked Las Vegas. I loved the … [Read more...]

Often we don’t know what we are Born To deal with.
It certainly wasn’t in my conscious life plan that I would end up having power of attorney and being responsible for the care of my mum as she has increasingly bad dementia. Two years ago she moved in to a care home for some respite, and has ended up deciding to stay there.
I have found it heart breaking at times to witness her memory … [Read more...]

One of the many joys in my life over the last year has been to have joined Finchley Victoria Bowling Club, very close to my home in Finchley. Joining the club was as a result of a pivotal moment. Our next door neighbour Ralph died on June 29th 2014 at the age of 88 after a series of illnesses. He had been an anchor for me, and for my partner Helen. She grew up with him as a neighbour and had known … [Read more...]

This is the next story about pivotal moments on my own journey to becoming a Spiritual Pro. These stories will appear later this year in a book I am writing called Pivotal Moments.
In 2004, on my fourth trip to South Africa, I was collaborating with Richard Nefdt who based in Johannesburg. Soon after I arrived he said he wanted to take me to meet his friend Sidwell Nxumalo who lived in Soweto. … [Read more...]

Ever since I was a child, I dreamed of writing a book. When I was eight years old, when people asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I said, “Pens!” which was my young way of saying, “I want to write.” So I got a lot of pens for Christmas, but I didn’t start writing seriously for another thirty years. Although I am most widely known for my book The Work We Were Born To Do I nearly didn’t get it … [Read more...]

This is the next story about pivotal moments on my own journey to becoming a Spiritual Pro. These stories will appear later this year in a book I am writing called Pivotal Moments.
Ministering to my Dad
It was August 12th 2005, a Friday, one week before my Dad died.
I was doing my evening shift sitting with Dad in his room at the hospice in Weybridge in Surrey. He’d been quite peaceful, … [Read more...]

Beverley Glick joined my original community when it began in March 2012. This is the story of the magic, miracles and transformation that she has experienced in the last three years.
As there are still a few places left to be a founder member of the Spiritual Pro Global Community, I thought I would share Beverley’s story of the transformation she has experienced by joining the previous … [Read more...]

“My contribution to Downton Abbey has been to create a family environment where everyone pulls together, everyone is valued and everyone has a voice”
Liz Trubridge, Executive Producer of Downton Abbey
While the global success of this long-running period drama can’t be attributed to one person, executive producer Liz Trubridge has certainly been instrumental in fostering in atmosphere of love … [Read more...]

I promised to share more pivotal moments on my blog about my journey.
One of the most significant elements is your willingness and ability to commission yourself and your creative projects, and then put these project out into a world that doesn’t yet know they want you and your projects. This is one of the ultimate acts of self-leadership in my mind, and also one of the most generous things you … [Read more...]

"A good life is one hero’s journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then, if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfilment or the fiasco. There's always the possibility of a fiasco. But there's also the possibility of bliss."
~ Joseph … [Read more...]

I promised to share more on my blog about the Spiritual Pro idea that is becoming my new Signature Material and that I officially launch in later this month.
This post is about the moment of grace I experienced that caused me to give up self-improvement.
When I discovered the human potential and personal growth movement in 1986, I immediately felt I had found a home for my soul. This felt … [Read more...]

Here is the next in my series of posts about my own journey of becoming a Spiritual Pro.
The two most important days in your life are:
You the day you were born
The day you discover why you were born
This is the story of the day I discovered why I was born and what I was born to do.
In 1986, I was in my corporate career selling computers in the City of London, doing well on the … [Read more...]

I promised to share more on my blog about the Spiritual Pro idea that is becoming my new Signature Material and that I officially launch in January 2015. So I am going to be sharing some key pivotal moments that have been the cause of me creating this new project and have opened me up and influenced my thinking.
A key pivotal moment happened fairly recently, on January 31st 2014 when I met … [Read more...]

We don’t often get to hear about the impact we have on each other, or about the miracles we can be in each other’s lives. We do our work because we love doing it; we scatter our seeds and hope some of them blossom. But I recently had a truly blessed experience that revealed the influence I’d had on someone with whom I’d had no previous contact.
On July 23rd 2014 I received an email from a … [Read more...]

Does the amateur in us magically disappear when we turn pro? Of course not, but we do operate from a higher level of awareness – we are now aware of when we are behaving as an amateur and out of fear than we were. We realise we have a choice, we can ask, “What would the pro in me do now? What would love do now rather than my fear?”
What has been the consequence of turning pro for me?
There … [Read more...]

I actually made the decision to turn pro on April 24th 1989 at the age of 31. It was the day, after three years of inner turmoil and soul searching, that I finally printed, signed and handed in my resignation letter that I had composed eighteen months earlier. It was the day I committed to my calling. I was at my desk in Holborn London, the offices of the Digital Equipment Corporation where I had … [Read more...]

July 2014 marks twenty-five years since I “turned pro,” by leaving my corporate career and committing to my calling. It was the day I accepted and surrendered to what felt like my destiny and to being more of who I was born to be, and doing what I was born to do rather than fulfilling the roles I thought were expected of me.
I use the expression “Pro” here to denote an archetype rather than a … [Read more...]

For many years, I have spoken in my live events about what I call “Oh, shit!” moments. (I am from Essex, and have given myself permission to swear at times!)
These are moments when we suddenly get inspired and see things clearly, often as if we have awoken from some kind of trance. But these moments of clarity are often swiftly followed by our fear of this clarity. Our thinking mind generates … [Read more...]

Nine things that I found fascinating and inspiring on set at Downton Abbey
When I was seven years old, I removed the back of our family’s transistor radio to see what was there, and was fascinated by what was behind the pretty veneer. That was the beginning of my life-long fascination with understanding “How things work.”
I love seeing behind the scenes, and may explain part of my … [Read more...]

In essence, it means you have come here to awaken, to remember that you already an amazing being and remember the goodness that is at the heart of you. I believe that it means you did not arrive on earth as a blank slate, but as a highly individuated soul with a promise in your heart, a calling to enact and a person to become. You have come here for an adventure, and to awaken to your amazingly … [Read more...]

The story behind I Am Nick Williams...
Over the past eight years, a series of personal challenges has propelled me into a kind of meltdown. The sequence of life events proceeded as follows…
In August 2005, I lost my father, to whom I was very close.
I subsequently became a carer for my increasingly frail mother.
In 2006 I ended a significant collaboration and business partnership.
In … [Read more...]